Originally the Art of Joel Adams blog, I had at one point posted so much to the blog to promote Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine, I suggested that it become the Official blog to the magazine.. After many wonderful years as such, the blog has come back to me. My Art site is currently being revamped and when it is done, I will be moving all blogs over to that site... Enjoy

Friday, December 10, 2010

Thursday, December 9, 2010

I have or should i say had a Facebook page that I used mostly for business reasons, and keeping in touch with fans and letting them know what I was working on. This past Tuesday, I posted to my page the new cover to the upcoming issue of NUDE because I have a new piece of art in it. I added a link to pre-order the issue and I made the cover my profile picture for the day.

I woke up Wednesday morning to find my profile picture was gone. I immediately went to my email and found a message from Facebook stating:

"You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use, and this photo has been removed. Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence, or other violations of the Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wphotos."

So I followed the link to see if there was anymore information to help and got this:

Photos are removed if they contain nudity, drug use or other obscene content. If the photo attacks another individual or group, it will be removed as well.

The image was the cover of the new issue of NUDE. I'll give it that it is one of the sexier covers that Carrie has shot, but was there anything to censor? Even though I had viewed the image many times now, having worked with it to put it on the Carrieleigh.com website, I had to pull up the image again to really look at it. This cover is going to sit on shelves at Barnes and Noble and Borders. It will be up on Amazon.com. Maybe Carrie missed some "naughty bit" that could not only get the image pulled from Facebook, but hidden from display at the book stores.

I looked at it carefully. I blew it up huge on my monitor like a pervert hunting for some bit of naughty, but I found nothing. All I can figure was that maybe the person who viewed the image looked at it quickly as a small image and, at a glance, thought the model was naked. So, Wednesday night, I posted the image again as my profile pic, but this time I added in the description asking that before anyone thinks to remove the image to examine it because it did conform to Facebook's "terms of use".

Thursday morning I woke up and immediatly turned on my laptop to make sure that it was still there and, "whew", there is was. I got up and out of the house, arrived at work and turned my computer on, went to Facebook and... gone... no explanations, just the same form letter. What I didn't mention before is with the form letter and amongst the terms of use, it basically tells you that they will not tell you what images they remove or why.

This frustrated the hell out of me. I am not a sit down and just take it. I make calls, I write letters, I try to get and answer... but you can't with Facebook. No way to really contact anyone. No emails for sure. I was to then forced to just sit and take it while someone played judge and jury with the images on my page. Facebook's own Gestapo of censorship.

I wasn't done, I got a little hot-headed this time and I added, right on the image, below the image, and in big enough type to read at a small size, I wrote asking to please look at the image before taking it down again. Maybe not as friendly as that, but that is the gist of it. Then I went on about my day.

Well, it didn't take a day for me to find out if they would ignore my message and take it down again. Around 7pm, I went to my Facebook page and... it was gone... but this time it was not just the image that was gone, the Facebook censors deleted my whole account. I was in shock. I had been on Facebook for at least 2 years and the page had become a huge business tool for me. I had over 2000 friends and customers on the page that are now gone. I have dozens of sites that now link to a blank page on Facebook where people would be looking for me, and all because some "Censor Nazi" would either not look carefully at the image, or has standards that are even more puritanical that of the Facebook terms of use.

Let me just add in here that the page I had with Facebook was completely set to private so the only way you could see anything on my page would be to be on my "friends" list. I do this intentionally for these reasons because as an artist who does nudes and work that may be risque for some, I want to make sure that only the audience I chose can see and no children can have access.

This is not my first run-in with censorship on Facebook, I guess. I have had artwork of nudes removed. Tastefully done artistic nudes, but it didn't seem to matter. If I drew a nipple, it was gone. I guess if it is not Titian or Michelangelo, it is then naked and not art. This doesn't explain the magazine cover though, and there seems to be no-one to ask "why?".

Maybe I shouldn't have called them Censor Nazis... Maybe Facebook sucks.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

It is really amazing to watch as "Empires" are crumbling on the magazine rack, one magazine that wanted to be different, wanted to be classy, and wanted to be in and of itself, a piece of art, grow like Carrie Leigh's NUDE has.

And we're still growing in Fall 2010 with an exciting new issue to be announced soon!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Note: You are welcome to download my art as long as you give credit where credit is due. After all, in print publishing, at least in Carrie Leigh's NUDE, credit is always given to the photographer and artist.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Note: You are welcome to download my art as long as you give credit where credit is due. After all, in print publishing, at least in Carrie Leigh's NUDE, credit is always given to the photographer and artist.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Each issue of NUDE features a well known established model who has worked with a variety of photographers. With so many amazing models to choose from, we are turning to our audience for suggestions as to who you want to see on the pages of NUDE. Please send your suggestion as to who should join should join such greats as Charlotta Champagne, Veronika Kotlajic, Sarah Ellis, Datura Noir, and in our next issue, Candace Nirvana.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Which is your favorite cover? Vote on the right....view them all at Amazon.com

Carrie Leigh’s NUDE is an international art quarterly founded in Los Angeles, Calif., in 2007 by Carrie Leigh Publishing Group. The publication has no advertising and is funded by subscriptions and bookstore sales. The magazine has grown into an internationally recognized brand with fine art photographer Carrie Leigh now one of the world’s top female publishers. Leigh was the First Lady of the Playboy mansion in the 1980s.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Our distributor recently found boxes of all the past issues of Carrie Leigh's NUDE in a warehouse, and copies of all 11 issues are now being sold at Amazon.com. The first issue sold out and used copies now sell on e-bay for as much as $197. Such overpricing of her art quarterly was not what Carrie intended.

You will also find previous issues of Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine in the website store. The new Spring 2010 issue is now available at Amazon.com.

Monday, August 16, 2010

I would like the art community to stop for a minute today to reflect on the passing of one of our great photographers, Heman Leonard. He died Saturday, Aug. 14, at the age of 87. For those of you who do not know who he was and what he did, you can read his obituary here. He photographed iconic images of jazz greats such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra. Google his name, look at his art, and you will see why he was one of our greats.

Six months ago we began an interview with him that was never completed. As an artist and a publisher, I felt that he should share his life with us at NUDE but that was not to be.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Photography by Carrie Leigh published in previous issues of Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine

The first issue of Carrie Leigh's NUDE sold out and now sells on e-bay for as much as $197. Such overpricing of a used copy of her art quarterly was not what Carrie intended. The distributor recently found boxes of all the past issues in a warehouse, and copies of all 11 issues are now being sold at Amazon.com.

You will also find previous issues of Carrie Leigh's NUDE magazine in the website store. The new Spring 2010 issue is now available at amazon.com.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Coming in future issues of Carrie Leigh's NUDE, we will take you traveling. City by city, we will devote a special feature to the best nude models in the world: Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, London, New York, Tokyo.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The next issue returns art to its origins. As the international media has already reported, we captured nudes in the midst of the ruins of Detroit, a once-great world city. Since the dawn of time, an image is worth a thousand words. NUDE reveals where billions of U.S. taxpayers' bailout dollars have gone.

In London, who better to show the Queen without her clothes than another woman? Almost a thousand years ago, Lady Godiva threw off her clothes and rode down England's cobblestone streets in protest of the crown. The cobblestone streets are still there and, in a NUDE exclusive, a female photographer takes her models in broad daylight down the same cobblestone streets to London's grand institutions. This issue will bare it all.

As always, the Spring 2010 issue will also be a timeless visual treat.

Monday, March 22, 2010

As a child, Alicia spent fifteen years of her life pursuing the art of ballet. Although committed and passionate towards dancing, she incurred many injuries. One of those injuries would end her career as a dancer. At seventeen, months before entering Julliard, she was told that she needed a hip replacement and that dancing would more than likely be over for her. “I was devastated, but my mom, who has been the queen of guardian angels to me, encouraged me to continue on and start a new career.” Just a week following her eigthteenth birthday, Alicia left Michigan, where she was born and raised, to pursue modeling in New York.

“After so many auditions, dead-ends, closed doors, and no thank you, I was at my breaking point.” After living in New York for three years, Alicia began to show signs of discouragement. Despite small breakthroughs such as being a cover model in two books and achieving an editorial in a national magazine, her progress became taxing and even overwhelming. While thoughts about quitting became more frequent, she would turn to her mother for encouragement.

Taking her opportunity as a sign, Alicia brings a different kind of beauty to Nude. While not just a pretty face, Alicia is a curvy model, who is able to use her dance background to produce graceful poses. Her goal is to inspire others to be comfortable with themselves and who they are. Her refusal to drop weight to maintain an image is grounded in her beliefs to portray realistic images to readers as well as other models and young girls. She wants to show that “You can become successful in a world where, if you have the drive and strength, you don’t have to blend into the mold.”

Saturday, March 20, 2010

The sold-out Fall 2007 Premiere issue of Carrie Leigh's NUDE is now available for the first time and only through the website. This issue, signed and numbered by Carrie Leigh, will be limited to 200 copies.

Where did these copies come from?

Carrie Leigh says, "When I launched NUDE I held on to a few copies of the Premeire issue, not knowing what would happen with this magazine. As it turns out it has become a success and now, after ten issues, I have decided to let go of some of my copies of the original NUDE, the Issue that has launched a fine art movement worldwide."

This is the only release of Issue Number 1, signed and numbered. Carrie Leigh will only sign 200 copies, so take advantage now of the $50 collectors' price. Copies of this issue, unsigned, have sold for far more than that on Ebay.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Selected by Australian photographer Andre J, published in Carrie Leigh's NUDE Fall 2009. Special thanks to UK photographer Jan Murphy, published in the Summer 2009 issue of NUDE, for her help in creating this post.